WHAT ABBAS WANTS FOR ALL OF ISRAEL

First, a photograph (taken about 100 years ago) of the tomb of the Patriarch Joseph.

It was a forlorn and solitary stone structure in the middle of a desert. No life, no activity, no development. Just like most of the Land of Israel at that time.

But then the Jews, the descendants of Joseph and his brothers, the descendants of the former slaves who fled Egypt with their ancestor Joseph's mummified body in its Egyptian sarcophagus,descendants of the former slaves who had carried it in the desert for 40 years so that they could bury him near his beloved birthplace, came to return to their Land.

The Tomb of Joseph was cleaned up, and the area came back to life. For the Land and the People are One.

The Tomb of Joseph became a center of life and learning.










But the Government of Israel abandoned the Tomb of Joseph in October, 2000, to appease the Arabs in the midst of their genocidal intifada.

The Arabs responded by burning and sacking the Tomb.



















They desecrated the holy place.













They painted it green to turn it into a mosque.

That is what they want to do to the entire Land of Israel; drive out the Jews, destroy all of the life and development that the Jews have created in what was a forlorn desert, and return the land to the savage brutality they have brought about in Gaza. They no longer deny it. Abbas says he wants ALL of Jerusalem, including Herod the Great's Western Wall.

And that would only whet their appetite for Al-Andalus and the rest of the West.

TURKEY ONCE AGAIN SCREWS US BIGTIME

They did it in 2003 when they denied us the right to use Turkey as a base for troops entering Iraq.

They are doing it now: IHT/AP:

ISTANBUL, Turkey: Parliament has authorized the government to send troops into northern Iraq to root out Kurdish rebels who have been conducting raids into Turkey. The vote removed the last legal obstacle to an offensive, but there was no sign of imminent action as the United States urged restraint.

Turkish leaders, under pressure from Washington and Baghdad, have signaled they would not immediately give the order to send in 60,000 soldiers, armor and attack helicopters into a region that has largely escaped the chaos of the Iraq war.

The crisis along the border, where the Turkish troops have massed since summer, has driven up oil prices along with tensions between Turkey and its longtime NATO ally, the United States.

• Erdogan and Gul and their comrades are islamists who should not be trusted.

• We should move our bases out of Turkey. (Bezmer can be built up, and we can deploy other in new bases in Iraq,)
  

• We should kick Turkey out of NATO - this will allow us to support the Kurds and Iraq in the event of war.

• We should assist Sarkozy's efforts to keep them out of the EU.

EITHER FOLKS ARE WITH US OR THEY ARE WITH THE ENEMY. AND TURKEY STANDS WITH ASSAD.

ASIDE: I have been virtually alone in the blogosphere in calling for this. WAKE UP! Berlinski is wrong; she's in denial because she likes the life she leads in Istanbul; Turkey IS on the other side.

ANOTHER HUMAN DIES OF BIRD FLU IN INDONESIA - THIS ONE HAD NO DIRECT CONTACT WITH BIRDS

JAKARTA POST:

Tangerang regency in Banten province has recorded five deaths from bird flu after the latest victim, a 12-year-old boy, died from the virus on Oct. 13.

The regency health agency's head of communicable disease prevention, Yuliah Iskandar, told The Jakarta Post on Tuesday the boy, a resident of Ceger village in Sepatan district, had suffered high fever from Sept. 30 but was only admitted to Tangerang General Hospital on Oct. 8.

... Yuliah said the victim and his family had not had direct contact with live poultry and birds near the house in the village, but there was a poultry-breeding business some 500 meters away from the victim's house.

... In August, a Tangerang maid died from bird flu two days after being treated for a high fever and acute pneumonia at Tangerang's Sari Asih Hospital.

Her employers, Wahyu Proyato and Winda Amalia, residents of Perumnas II complex in Tangerang regency, said they had no idea how their maid contracted the virus because there were no chickens at their home or in the neighborhood.

Banten province has recorded 19 human cases of bird flu, 15 of which have been fatal.

• THIS NEWS SEEMS TO CORROBORATE AN EARLIER REPORT WE POSTED ON HERE (OCTOBER 4TH, 2007) - THAT THE BIRD FLU VIRUS HAS IN FACT MUTATED AND IS NOW MORE COMMUNICABLE TO HUMANS FROM BIRDS.

• ALL THAT'S LEFT FOR THIS TO BECOME A DEADLY PANDEMIC IS FOR THE VIRUS TO MUTATE INTO ONE MORE READILY COMMUNICABLE FROM HUMAN TO HUMAN (H2H).

• THIS IS LIKELY TO HAPPEN, SOMEDAY... AND SOONER THAN WE'D LIKE...
  

STAY TUNED...

25% OF UK'S NHS HOSPITALS ARE UNSANITARY

INDEPENDENT: One in four hospital trusts 'fails to meet hygiene standards'

The independent NHS watchdog, the Healthcare Commission, has pledged to crack down on dirty hospitals after official figures showed one in four trusts had failed to meet minimum hygiene standard.

Annual performance ratings for every NHS trust, published today, show 44 hospital trusts out of 172 (25 per cent) failed at least one of three core standards on infection control. Overall, hygiene was the area where compliance with the core standards set by the Commission for the NHS was lowest.

YUCH.

SOCIALISM SUCKS. (More here.)

MR. & MRS. BIN LADEN BACK TOGETHER

ARAB NEWS:

JEDDAH, 18 October 2007 — Omar Bin Laden, the 27-year-old son of Osama Bin Laden, is said to be back with his 51-year-old British wife, Jane Felix-Browne, who now uses the Muslim name Zaina Muhammad. They are currently living together in Europe, most likely in the south of France, said a report in Asharq Al-Awsat, a sister publication of Arab News.

In a phone interview with the newspaper’s Muhammad Shafey on Tuesday, Omar said he had just completed shooting a documentary with Zaina for the BBC which is to be aired in December this year. In the documentary, the fourth son of Bin Laden recounts the story of his involvement with the British grandmother after they met horseback riding at Egypt’s Pyramids last September. ... Zaina did confirm to Asharq Al-Awsat that Omar had filed for divorce while she was performing Umrah recently. “But it was invalid from a legitimate standpoint because he was forced to do so by his family.”

Zaina acknowledged that she was presently living under special circumstances with the man she had chosen. “Omar did not divorce me because I am faithful and he understands me. We are living a life of joy, virtue and dignity,” Asharq Al-Awsat quoted her as saying.

However, she refused to disclose the location of the European city in which they are living. “I do not want to be hounded by the media and photographers who will transform our tranquil life into a living hell,” she said. The newspaper ran a recent picture of the two sitting at a large table in an unidentified location.

Zaina revealed that she was applying the final touches to the import-export company that she was starting with her husband in an unnamed European capital. She stated that they were in the process of looking for a commercial partner from the Gulf region.

Omar described his marriage as “good and strong” despite the considerable age gap between the two.

Zaina described her husband as her closest friend and said they had many things in common. “Omar is incredibly kind and wonderful and represents all the noble characteristics of a true Arab,” she said. “His heart is pure and he is a forthright, calm and noble man in every sense of the word.”

THEY DESERVE EACH OTHER. AND THEM SOME.

SCENARIO: WHAT IF WE ELECTED A DEMOCRAT PRESIDENT, AND SHE AND REID AND PELOSI DO WHAT THEY SAY THEY'LL DO???

WHAT MIGHT HAPPEN IF... the politicians who say they'll stop the international terrorist wiretaps get in a position to do so...

WORLD SILENT AS ISRAEL KILLS 5 YEAR OLD PALESTINIAN BOY (PLUS: 722 PALESTINIAN KIDS SAVED BY ISRAELI MEDICAL GROUP)

Just kidding. Obviously, it was the Palestinians who killed the 5 year old:

Palestinian Authority security forces shot dead two Palestinians on Saturday, including a five-year-old boy, in the West Bank city of Qalqilyah. According to local resident, security forces opened fire after a 22-year-old man refused to stop at a PA roadblock in the city. The 22-year-old man was killed, as was five-year-old Yazid Obid.

Israelis are actually more in the practice of saving the lives of Palestinian kids. The Save a Child's Heart Project is an Israeli medical foundation providing heart treatment to children from around the world. They help children from regions where the vast majority of people support the destruction of the Jewish State. 722 Palestinian children have been saved since the program began. Coincidentally, that's about the same number of Israeli noncombatants who've been murdered by Palestinian terrorists since the Palestinians rejected Barak's peace offer at Camp David II.

[Cross-posted to Mere Rhetoric]

MERKEL TO PUTIN: IRAN IS KIND OF CRAZY, SHOULDN'T GET NUKES (PLUS: YUP, OPERATION ORCHARD HIT A NUKE FACILITY)

We wonder if she had to speak very slowly and use really small words:

German Chancellor Angela Merkel backed the possibility of stronger sanctions against Iran before she met Monday with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who planned to travel on to Teheran from Germany. Iran, Merkel was quoted by Army Radio as telling Putin, was a danger to Israel's security. The German leader said her talks with Putin would focus on the standoff with Iran over its nuclear program and the resolution of Kosovo's status... The US push for stronger sanctions against Iran over its disputed nuclear program has emerged as the theme likely to dominate the talks, with Putin set to visit Teheran after Monday's meeting.

So that last sentence was kind of the reason we're not particularly hopeful on this. Unless we've missed a memo, the only thing stopping the spread of nuclear technology in the Middle East right now is the occasional Israeli bombing run over Arab territory:

Israel’s air attack on Syria last month was directed against a site that Israeli and American intelligence analysts judged was a partly constructed nuclear reactor, apparently modeled on one North Korea has used to create its stockpile of nuclear weapons fuel, according to American and foreign officials with access to the intelligence reports. The description of the target addresses one of the central mysteries surrounding the Sept. 6 attack, and suggests that Israel carried out the raid to demonstrate its determination to snuff out even a nascent nuclear project in a neighboring state. The Bush administration was divided at the time about the wisdom of Israel’s strike, American officials said, and some senior policy makers still regard the attack as premature.

Or, more accurately, the occasional totally awesome Israeli bombing run over Arab territory. But want to guess which part of the Executive was against the attack? If you said "not the State Department", (a) you're wrong (b) welcome to MR. We're always glad to have new readers.

[Cross-posted to Mere Rhetoric]

UN HUMAN RIGHTS SPECIAL OBSERVER: UN SHOULD GET OUT OF MIDDLE EAST PEACEMAKING BECAUSE IT'S TOO PRO-ISRAEL

Explicitly echoing the new Hamas party line, John Dugard is attacking the UN for not paying enough attention to the Palestinians:

The UN should leave the Middle East Quartet unless the group starts taking Palestinian human rights seriously, a UN envoy was quoted by Israel Radio as saying on Monday. UN special observer on human rights for the Palestinian territories John Dugard told BBC that the world body "does itself little good" by remaining in the Middle East Quartet, who other members include the US, the EU, and Russia. "In my most recent report to the General Assembly... I will suggest that the secretary general withdraw the UN from the Quartet, if the Quartet fails to have regard to the human rights situation in the Palestinian territories," Dugard said.

People are sometimes surprised to learn that the UN employs someone whose job is to report the most insane Palestinian fantasies and delusions as facts." When pressed on his refusal to give any credence to Israeli claims or defenses seriously, he has answered - no joke - that it's not his job to do that. As for Dugard borrowing the Hamas party line - it's a two way street. He's also endorsed the de facto destruction of Israel, for what that's worth. Balanced and evenhanded, the UN is.

[Cross-posted to Mere Rhetoric]

Another "Hate Crime" Hoax from the Left

We read:

"Air America radio host Randi Rhodes is temporarily off the air, but claims she was brutally attacked near her Manhattan apartment are bogus, her lawyer and a police source said today.

Fellow host Jon Elliott claimed on the liberal radio network that Rhodes had been mugged while walking her dog, Simon, on Sunday night. Elliot, who said Rhodes lost several teeth in the attack, waxed about a possible conspiracy. "Is this an attempt by the right-wing, hate machine to silence one of our own?" he asked on the air, according to Talking Radio, a blog. "Are we threatening them? Are they afraid that we're winning? Are they trying to silence intimidate us?"

A police source said Rhodes never filed a report and never claimed to be the victim of a mugging. Cops from Manhattan's 17th Precinct called her attorney, who told them Rhodes was not a victim of a crime, the source said.

Rhodes' lawyer told the Daily News she was injured in a fall while walking her dog. He said she's not sure what happened, and only knows that she fell down and is in a lot of pain. The lawyer said Rhodes expects to be back on the air Thursday. He stressed there is no indication she was targeted or that she was the victim of a "hate crime."

Still, the tale lived on in the blogosphere.... Another blogger shot back, "I very seriously doubt if this unfortunate woman was mugged by a conservative. To jump to the conclusion that she was mugged by someone on the right is bigotry of another kind."

Source

Ms Rhodes (nee Bueten) is of New York Jewish background and is a sort of Ann Coulter of the Left except that, being a Leftist, she has a very shaky relationship with the facts. A sample of her wit and wisdom: "The difference between Hitler and Bush is that Hitler was elected". So she is unbalanced in more ways than one.

For those who are interested in history, Bush narrowly won power as the result of an election conducted according to the applicable American laws. Hitler did not gain power as the result of an election. He decisively lost the 1933 German federal election. He gained power as a result of post-election negotiations with other political parties.

The distortion of those facts by Ms Rhodes has a certain superficial cleverness but is nonetheless deliberately inaccurate and dishonest.


(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)

Africans are less intelligent than Westerners, says DNA pioneer

Fury that anybody would say publicly what every single scientific study of the subject has shown

One of the world's most eminent scientists was embroiled in an extraordinary row last night after he claimed that black people were less intelligent than white people and the idea that "equal powers of reason" were shared across racial groups was a delusion. James Watson, a Nobel Prize winner for his part in the unravelling of DNA who now runs one of America's leading scientific research institutions, drew widespread condemnation for comments he made ahead of his arrival in Britain today for a speaking tour at venues including the Science Museum in London.

The 79-year-old geneticist reopened the explosive debate about race and science in a newspaper interview in which he said Western policies towards African countries were wrongly based on an assumption that black people were as clever as their white counterparts when "testing" suggested the contrary. He claimed genes responsible for creating differences in human intelligence could be found within a decade.

The newly formed Equality and Human Rights Commission, successor to the Commission for Racial Equality, said it was studying Dr Watson's remarks "in full". Dr Watson told The Sunday Times that he was "inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa" because "all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours - whereas all the testing says not really". He said there was a natural desire that all human beings should be equal but "people who have to deal with black employees find this not true".

His views are also reflected in a book published next week, in which he writes: "There is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically. Our wanting to reserve equal powers of reason as some universal heritage of humanity will not be enough to make it so."

The furore echoes the controversy created in the 1990s by The Bell Curve, a book co-authored by the American political scientist Charles Murray, which suggested differences in IQ were genetic and discussed the implications of a racial divide in intelligence. The work was heavily criticised across the world, in particular by leading scientists who described it as a work of "scientific racism"....

Anti-racism campaigners called for Dr Watson's remarks to be looked at in the context of racial hatred laws. A spokesman for the 1990 Trust, a black human rights group, said: "It is astonishing that a man of such distinction should make comments that seem to perpetuate racism in this way. It amounts to fuelling bigotry and we would like it to be looked at for grounds of legal complaint."

More here

(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)

UK'S "NURSE OF THE YEAR" QUITS BECAUSE OF RED-TAPE

UK TELEGRAPH: 'Nurse of the year' leaves for private sector

The "Nurse of the Year" 2007 has quit the NHS after becoming "ground down" by the bureaucrats and excessive paperwork that plague her profession.

Justine Whitaker was awarded the Nursing Standard title this year but is leaving East Lancashire Primary Care Trust next month for the private sector and to become a lecturer.

The 36-year-old has told how nursing staff were made to use cheaper bandages and dressings while health bosses wasted money on long meetings that achieved nothing.

She yesterday warned that a culture of "mistrust and fear" had crept into the NHS and things were bound to go "completely wrong" in Britain's hospitals if nothing is done.

• IF IT DOESN'T WORK THERE, THEN WHY DO IT HERE!?

• IT MAKES NO SENSE.

• BUT THAT'S WHAT ALL THE DEMS WANT TO DO.

• IF NATIONALIZATION AND SOCIALISM WORKED THEN WE'D ALL BE GOING TO THE USSR FOR HEALTHCARE.

RUSH LIMBAUGH ROCKS!!

I saw this video of Rush on Hannity and Colmes Monday night and I was just standing up and cheering. Rush rocks!! Marie did an excellent post on it all.

Rush isn't a Marine but his speech reminds me of that quote in "A Few Good Men" where Jack Nicholson says, "You messed with the wrong Marine." In Rush's case, you messed with the wrong Talk Show Host ;-).

TURKEY: NON-JUDEO-CHRISTIAN; NON-WESTERN; NON-EUROPEAN AND NOT A GOOD ALLY

The Dem anti-Armenian Genocide Resolution was a bad idea.

It was hatched by the traitorous Dems to hurt Bush and our allies in the Iraq War.

But in ridiculing the traitorous Dems for this little bit of treachery we should keep in mind that Turkey has been a lousy ally - one we should get tougher with, if not abandon.

The Turks prevented us from using our airbases there for troops deployments before the Iraq War, and this was a huge blow to our war plans and war efforts. NYTIMES:

Turkish Parliament Refuses to Accept G.I.'s in Blow to Bush
By Dexter Filkins
New York Times

Saturday 01 March 2003

ANKARA, Turkey, March 1 - The Turkish Parliament today dealt a major setback to the Bush administration's plans for a northern front against Iraq, narrowly rejecting a measure that would have allowed thousands of American combat troops to use the country as a base for an attack.

That was done by newly elected Erdogan and Gul - the same islamists calling the shots today.

Many analysts say this move by Turkey helped create or strengthen the insurgency because we couldn't smash the enemy between the anvil and the hammer. The troops coming from Turkey were going to be the hammer, but Turkey vetoed that and the hammer was never brought down on the enemy as a result.

And since then they've continued to be very uncooperative - and they've been messing with the Kurds. The Kurds have been better allies than the Turks - we should reward our good allies and chastise our bad ones.

There are now reports that Turkey is aligning itself with IRAN in order to defeat the PKK. This is bad for us and our allies in Iraq.

The Turks have been no better than Putin - which is to say they have not been good allies at all.

On top of these un-allylike moves on their part, they have continuously demonstrated a few hallmarks of islamism: thin-skin and hypocrisy.

Why do the Turks care what resolutions get passed in Congress!? BECAUSE THEY ARE MUSLIMS - and Muslims are generally intolerant and use they have repeatedly and publicly used violence and the threats of violence to foster dhimmitude. Muslims don't want to let non-Muslims draw pictures of Mohammed, or call genocide genocide. Well, I say "EFF YOU; WE WILL CALL A SPADE A SPADE." When we cannot speak the truth to our allies then they are not allies.

That's why I think we should (a) move our bases and relocate them to friendlier European nations like Bulgaria - where we have a burgeoning base in Bezmer. And we can new build bases in Iraq and in Central Asia.

We shouldn't keep troops in Germany or Turkey - it's so WW3/Cold War/yesterday.

And we should (b) make sure that Turkey doesn't get into the EU. I agree woith Sarkozy: Turkey doesn't belong in the EU because they are not IN Europe and not OF Europe.

And we should (c) throw them out of NATO.

In a war between Kurds and Turks we should be able to side with the Kurds, but NATO prevents that by tying our hands to the member state.

So we should throw Turkey out.

WW4 is a war in defense of the West. Turkey has chosen NOT to be a good ally of the West. We should treat them that way.

BOTTOM-LINE: I liked Bush most when he told the world that you are either with us or against us.

Turkey has shown that since 2003 - and the ascent of Erdogan and Gul and the islamicists - that they are NOT with us.

It's time to jettison them.

NOTE: Musharraf has been a much better ally than Turkey; he's actually deployed troops and jets in WW4 and killed thousands of the enemy. If Turkey wants the perks of NATO membership - and membership in the West, then Turkey has to be at least as good an ally as Pakistan. That's NOT asking too much.

STEVE COLBERT CHANNELS FRANK RICH

NYTIMES: I Am an Op-Ed Columnist (And So Can You!)

By STEPHEN COLBERT

Surprised to see my byline here, aren’t you? I would be too, if I read The New York Times. But I don’t. So I’ll just have to take your word that this was published. Frankly, I prefer emoticons to the written word, and if you disagree :(

I’d like to thank Maureen Dowd for permitting/begging me to write her column today. As I type this, she’s watching from an overstuffed divan, petting her prize Abyssinian and sipping a Dirty Cosmotinijito. Which reminds me: Before I get started, I have to take care of one other bit of business:

Bad things are happening in countries you shouldn’t have to think about. It’s all George Bush’s fault, the vice president is Satan, and God is gay.

There. Now I’ve written Frank Rich’s column too.

FUNNY STUFF. AND IN A BI-PARTISAN WAY. RTWT.

WHO DO YOU STAND WITH, THE DALAI LAMA OR AHMADINEJAD?

JUST ASKING. CUZ WHO YOU STAND WITH SAYS A LOT ABOUT WHO YOU ARE.


TODAY, BUSH STOOD WITH THE DALAI LAMA.

TODAY, PUTIN STOOD WITH AHMADINEJAD.


JUST SAYING...

IF I FORGET THEE O JERUSALEM: SHARANSKY CAMPAIGN

One Jerusalem puts up a short video that marks the beginning of a major campaign by chairman Natan Sharansky to save Jerusalem. And of course, here's the petition link on their main site.

The Pelosi Atrocity

It's the timing, stupid. More on Nancy Pelosi's Armenian Atrocity from the Editors of the Wall Street Journal:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, famous for donning a head scarf earlier this year to commune for peace with the Syrians, has now concluded that this is the perfect moment to pass a Congressional resolution condemning Turkey for the Armenian genocide of 1915. Problem is, Turkey in 2007 has it within its power to damage the growing success of the U.S. effort in Iraq. We would like to assume this is not Speaker Pelosi's goal.

To be clear: We write that we would like to assume, rather than that we do assume, because we are no longer able to discern whether the Speaker's foreign-policy intrusions are merely misguided or are consciously intended to cause a U.S. policy failure in Iraq.

Where is the upside in October 2007 to this Armenian resolution?

The bill is opposed by eight former U.S. Secretaries of State, including Madeleine Albright. After Tom Lantos's House Foreign Affairs Committee voted out the resolution last week, Turkey recalled its ambassador from Washington. Turkey serves as a primary transit hub for U.S. equipment going into both Iraq and Afghanistan. After the Kurdish terrorist group PKK killed 13 Turkish conscripts last week near the border with Iraq, Turkey's prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, asked the parliament to approve a huge deployment of the army along the border, threatening an incursion into Kurdish-controlled Iraq. This of course is the one manifestly successful region of post-Saddam Iraq. In a situation teetering on a knife-edge, President Bush has been asking Mr. Erdogan to show restraint on the Iraq border.

Yet Pelosi now wants to pass this resolution that is almost certain to ignite the Turks; very likely in a way that acts against the interests of the United States in supporting our troops in Iraq.

What possible purpose could there be for introducing this resolution now, other than to torpedo what appears now to be undeniable progress in Iraq? As I alluded to yesterday, I have never seen a more deceptive (to the American public)--yet blatant--attempt to sabotage a US military at WAR by a sitting US Congress. I can't think of a more shameless and despicable attempt in US history.

Ralph Peters comments further:

Legislation similar to this has come up repeatedly in Congress, yet it's always been defeated - in 2000, because of pressure from the Clinton administration. But if the resolution passes the House and Senate now, the Turks plan to evict us from Incirlik airbase in southeastern Turkey, to halt our military over-flight privileges and to shut down the supply routes into northern Iraq.

That's what the Democrats are aiming at. This resolution isn't about justice for the Armenians. Not this time. It's a stunningly devious attempt to impede our war effort in Iraq and force premature troop withdrawals.

The Dems calculate that, without those flights and convoys, we won't be able to keep our troops adequately supplied. Key intelligence and strike missions would disappear.

The Pentagon might be able to improvise other options. But the loss of the base and those routes would definitely hurt our troops. Severely. And we'd be more reliant than ever on a single, vulnerable lifeline running from Kuwait.

It's a brilliant ploy - the Dems get to stab our troops in the back, but lay the blame off on the Turks. They pretend they're responding to their Armenian-American constituents - while actually moving to placate MoveOn.org.

For the Democrats in Congress, it looks like a cost-free strategy. For our troops? When did the Dems give a damn about our troops? This resolution isn't a stand in favor of historical justice. It's an end-run that ducks behind the bench. It's one of the most cynical betrayals in our legislative history - of our troops, of Armenian-Americans, of the Kurds under threat from the Turkish military and of the people of Iraq.

We can't let Pelosi & Co. get away with this one. We need to call the Dems on it and make it clear that we, the people, know what they're trying to do.

Right now there are hundreds of new "IED Resistant" Armored carriers on the runways in Turkey. American soldiers need those carriers so that AMERICAN LIVES can be saved on the battlefield. Yet Pelosi and the Defeatocrats seem to care less about the loss of American lives than they do about sabotaging American success in the region. In fact, based on this resolution, I would go so far as to say that Nancy Pelosi WANTS more US deaths to occur to turn up pressure again against the war. And if she is successful, every drop of American blood that is lost because of a Turkish rebellion against the US is squarely on the hands of the Bolsheviks in the Democrat Congress.

Folks, this is beyond the pale; this is where politics ends and treason begins.

If ever there was a time to write your Congressmen and Senators, this would be it. And perhaps a love note to Nancy Pelosi would be in order as well.

UPDATE: Thomas Sowell calls it "Sabotage in Wartime"...

Washington: Attempt to Shut Down Conservative Christian Conference

The main mission of Watchmen on the Walls is in fact to pray for and support Israel but to the Left, their completely Biblical rejection of homosexuality is what defines them:

"An anti-gay religious group is planning a three-day conference beginning Friday at the Lynnwood Convention Center. Watchmen on the Walls expects as many as 700 people to attend the prayer gathering, including religious leaders and an anti-gay activist who claims the Holocaust was perpetrated by gays.

Convention center officials said there's little they can do to stop an organization from renting the publicly owned convention center. The venue is owned by the Lynnwood Public Facilities District, a public taxing district that operates the convention center but is separate from the city. "Our understanding is that they're law-abiding. They have a right of free speech just like any other group," said Mike Echelbarger, the board's chairman.

Snohomish County Executive Aaron Reardon said the group's anti-gay message isn't welcome.

Source

The "anti-gay activist who claims the Holocaust was perpetrated by gays" is Scott Lively. What Lively in fact does is point to very clear evidence of homosexuality in Hitler's Nazi party. You can read his claims for yourself here.

There is much support for Lively's thesis in conventional history. In addition to such well-known homosexuals as Roehm and Schirach at the top of the Nazi hierarchy there were others such as Heines -- whom Shirer ("The Rise and fall of the Third Reich") describes thus: "Edmund Heines, the Obergruppenfuehrer of Silesia... a notorious homosexual" (p. 307). Silesia is of course a major industrial area of great historic significance so command of the Nazis there was no mean post.

But Leftists avoid history like the plague, of course.

(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)

Feminists are sexy, rubbishy study finds

Stupid propaganda only below:

Popular stereotypes of feminists as unattractive and sexually unappealing are wrong -- in fact feminism may improve romantic relationships, a new study suggests. The findings, by Laurie Rudman and Julie Phelan of Rutgers University in Piscataway, N.J., appear this week in the research journal Sex Roles.

Rudman and Phelan surveyed 242 American college students and 289 older adults. They examined people's perception of their own feminism and its link to relationship health, measured by a combination of overall relationship quality, agreement about gender equality, relationship stability and sexual satisfaction.

Feminism was linked to healthier heterosexual relationships for women, they found, while men with feminist partners reported more stable relationships and greater sexual satisfaction.

The findings provided no evidence for the notion that females who champion women's rights are likelier to be single or lesbian than others, Rudman and Phelan added. Indeed, they found that feminist women were more likely to be in a heterosexual romantic relationship than nonfeminist women.

Source. Journal abstract here.

This study is a prize example of how deeply unserious and totally unscholarly most psychological research is. It draws inferences about whole population subgoups ("feminists") from groups of respondents that are ludicrously unrepresentative of any known population. The use of an accessible group of undergraduate students is simply boring. We all know that students can usually be relied on to give the "right" answers to questionnaires. But in this case an even more unrepresentative group of respondents was also used: 289 respondents to an online questionnaire. Who answers online questionnaires? Heaven knows. That their responses will differ from the vast majority who do not answer computer surveys seems more than a little likely, however.

The plain boring old truth is that facts about a group can only be gleaned either by surveying the whole group or a representative sample of them. As there was no attempt at any kind of representative sampling on this occasaion, no inferences can be drawn from the results. In my own psychological research, I almost invariably used general population sampling but I was one of the very few who were interested enough in truth to do so.

I showed years ago that a major feminist myth was the reverse of the truth when examined on a general population sample so I have little doubt what a serious examination of the hypothesis allegedly examined above would show.

(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)

IN DEFENSE OF ANN COULTER

I am one of those people who once you win me over, I'm pretty loyal. Ann Coulter won my loyalty a long time ago and while I may disagree with her from time to time I'm not as willing as others to turn on her.

When I thought about the title for this post I was pretty sure I had used the title before, sure enough I had. I wrote the first post with this title back in March of this year when conservatives were again throwing Coulter under the bus for her comments about Edwards. What amazed me at the time is how willingly so many conservatives believed the Drive By Media's spin on what she had said without knowing the context.

I see the same thing happening now. Many conservatives are throwing her under the bus and even calling her anti-semitic. There is a wonderful post by Newsbusters explaining the controversy, I encourage all of you to check it out.

What doesn't surprise me is that Media Matters is at the heart of demonizing Coulter. In a matter of weeks they have spun a controversy for Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh and now not surprisingly, Ann Coulter.

I get that she is a little too brash for many and some conservatives don't care for her. In one of Patrick's posts he had this to say:

Her tendency to clown around and make outrageous statements is what makes her so amusing but sometimes she's like an embarrassing drunk trashy relative at a posh wedding.

I don't necessarily completely disagree with that statement.

Yet, my point would be that as conservatives lets not be so willing to take the Media Matters' talking points and run with them without knowing the whole context. Lets wait and hear the particular conservative's side of the story.

ISRAELI DOCTORS SAVING LIVES OF IRAQI AND PALESTINIAN CHILDREN

Oh, those evil racist genocidal Jews with their evil racist genocidal ways:

Three Israeli doctors on Tuesday screened 40 Iraqi children suffering from heart disease in a rare instance of cooperation between people from Israel and the Arab country. The doctors said they hoped their actions will improve relations between the two Mideast nations and ease tensions between Israel and the rest of the Arab world. Dr. Sion Houri, director of the pediatric intensive care unit at Wolfson Medical Center in Holon, Israel, said he thought ties and friendship were being built through his work in Jordan with the Iraqi children. "Our only previous exchanges with the Iraqis are the Scud missiles", he said, referring to the missiles Iraq, under former dictator Saddam Hussein, fired on Israel during the 1991 Gulf War.

This is of course nothing new. MK Aryeh Eldad - who is regularly and literally accused by the left of being genocidal - is explicit that his role as a doctor and human being compels him even to treat injured terrorists. But it does suggest something unseemly about the motives of the boycott leaders who are trying to crush the Israeli medical industry because of the racism of Israeli doctors.

[Cross-posted to Mere Rhetoric]